Voyagers : OMNI (1989)


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Published in :
Risszeichnungsjournal #69 (9/10 1989), page 9

History:

In the early eighties of the 20th century there was a remarkable TV show called "VOYAGERS". It told the story of an organization of time travellers (called the VOYAGERS...), who hurried through history with their portable time machines to fix something that went wrong (the question is HOW did they know what was right and what was wrong, but let's just pretend they did). The time travellers had a history handbook where all relevant historical incidents were listed, and the OMNI, a small pocket watch looking time machine. The OMNI usually is fabricated of brass (*), has a day-, month-, year- and century-scale which cover 30 to 40 centurys that can be travelled. All OMNI's have an automatic override and usually are calibrated to a certain time-window that can be travelled (*).

Technical Data :

The depicted OMNI is a (rather) regular model and belongs to Phineas Bogg, the hero of this show, who unfortunately LOST his HANDBOOK because of his clumsiness and had picked up a highschool boy from the eighties of the twentieth century as a replace for handbook (Jeffrey Jones, history ace, at your service). (Again, the attentive audience could ask, HOW did he get to 1980, when his OMNI was restricted to 1979 ??) The OMNI is programmed by 4 concentric scales, which can be adjusted to a specific day. In addition to that, the small globe in the center of the apparatus can be rotated to the desired location (somehow...). There are two light diodes, one green and one red, that indicate whether the mission is completed or not. The time machine is jumpstarted by pressing the button, and the traveller (and every living being in touch with him) is thrown through hyperspace and re-materialized ABOVE the target (regards to TIMEBANDITS), which could mean an unpleasant landing, but luckily the OMNI never chooses the same spot twice, so surprise is a steady companion. The automatic override does excactly this, either because it has a loose contact, or the high council wishes to speak to the time traveller....
The OMNI is a self-supporting time machine, capable of creating a dimensional rupture to the time tunnel. Energy is provided by a small hyperspace-nozzle. The travellers, recruited adventures and soldiers of fortune of past centuries (who had passed the entrance exams), wear their OMNI usually with its belt-clip (*).
(*) Note : There is ONE silver OMNI with unrestricted time calibration, it belongs to a renegade whose declared mission is to mess up history along his path. Because of his unrestricted travel capabilities, he is hard to capture. He wears it with a pocket watch chain ... of course !

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